The Ron Paul Legacy of Freedom: How people will govern themselves.

Future historians will
debate the point. Historians being what they are there will
doubtless be as many opinions as there are historians.

“ If the Ron Paul
Campaign had been competent would we still have taken back America?”

They may hold
conferences to consider the points, assay the individuals involved;
there will be no disagreement that it was through the candidacy of
Ron Paul that the world of political campaigns changed forever,
moving into networking, as opposed to hierarchy; The real question
will be the motives of those in charge of the official campaign. That
is natural; the Ron Paul Campaign overturned that political hierarchy
first.

Could the Campaign HQ in
Arlington, Virginia have held politics on its previous course if it
had been run competently, as the other presidential campaigns were
run? What if they had possessed some modicum of experience? What if
they had known that the media uses a Day Book, into which all
campaigns enter their events? What if they had had a steering
committee, standard for presidential campaigns? Lots of what ifs to
be discussed by historians. We can be sure they will be.

Did those entrusted by
Ron understand that for revolution to take place they must force
activists to react against authority?

The formal campaign in
Arlington, Virginia was from the first instance unable to do anything
much but antagonize activists, forcing volunteers to work on their
own. They refused to put up the Congressman's schedule; they refused
to pay so Ron could participate in what proved to be the pivotal
South Carolina debate until activists inundated them.

The historians will
debate if those failures were intentional or sheer incompetence.
Those details will interest only historians.

Those failures made it
necessary for individual activists, moved by the words and principles
of Ron Paul, to look about them and use what had been made available
through the Internet to take the campaign into their own hands.

And so a new world of
governance through persuasion and consensus was born.

The Internet erupted.
Signs in yards, on the highways, and in the sky appeared from the
pocketbooks and work of ordinary people. Graphics produced and shared
online, with requests filled by volunteers became routine. Ron
Paulists began monitoring ballot access; they learned how to conduct
registration drives, how to do videos, how to organize; how to fund
raise. They had to and they did so unburdened by anything but the
need to promote their candidate.

Through its absolute
failure, therefore the corporatized, official campaign made it
necessary to reinvent the forms for political action to which we had
become accustomed. As Jefferson said in the Declaration, “...all
experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while
evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms
to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to
reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their
duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for
their future security.”

The campaign flowed past
Arlington, Virginia to make history by forging new tools of human
action. That, history will note. The people had had enough of
regular government and those who acted like one.

When you build new
tools that work those tools get used.

Those same tools,
decentralized strategies for broad social cooperation that lower the
cost for accomplishing rapid change, are now being applied to all
human action. The CorporaState will feel the impact like a sledge
hammer to the side of the head.

Not to say it is going
to be easy; but now it is impossible to stop. The people know how to
do it. A taste of their own, individual power was all they needed.

Forget Blackwater; Erik
Prince will return to playing with toy soldiers and conducting
seminars for hunters once he gets out of prison. The War in Iraq
will sputter to a halt. The debates on whether we should have gone
will cease. Revolution is happening.

The continued ability of
corporations and government to redirect our money into their pockets
always depended on their cleverness in keeping a hierarchal social,
political, and business structure in place. The Ron Paul Revolution
changed the rules.

The change took place
first in politics but is essentially spiritual, reaching into the
minds and hearts of people across the world to whisper, “you are
all One.”

If that sounds much too
mystical to be relevant to politics, think again. We are spiritual
beings in material form no matter what our faith. Today much of the
Earth is Christian, not through preaching but through demonstrating
the benefits of living out that truth; Christians believe we are One
in Him. But the connection between us is understood by all faiths.

In his book, “The Rise
of Christianity,” Rodney Stark demonstrated this using the staid
tools of sociology. The words of Jesus said, “Whatsoever you do
for another you do also for Me.” Those early Christians took that
literally, reaching out to nurse the victims of plague, ignoring the
religious affiliation of those they struggled to save. To each they
granted through the truth of their actions the inborn autonomy of
self-ownership. Women were free, a freedom they would enjoy until
the Christian Church became hierarchal with Constantine.

Think of that early
Church-State, the one that imposed a hierarchy where there had been
freedom to live in brotherhood with all. Today we reverse direction.

Individual freedom, free
choice, enforced by custom and law, enriches all of us in more ways
than we can possibly imagine because the world so created shatters
all of our own self-framed limitations and prejudices.

Now, this moment, the
flow of time and power is moving away forever from the concentration
of power in the hands of a few and towards the means each of us can
use to realize our own personal power.

The invisible hand, all
of us together, is flexing its muscles.

So today the Ron Paul
Air Force takes to the air with banners and blimps to exclaim that
all who read should, “Google Ron Paul;” an invitation for
connection that transcends all boundaries. People are googling and
finding ideas that make sense spoken by a man who demonstrably means
what he says. That truth is ripping through the long winded and
carefully manicured images delivered through corporate media.

The contrast is
striking.

Websites built by
volunteers provide tools for action. People gather in their
communities to sign the Revolution from bridges and sidewalks. The
Granny Warriors take it on the road, uniting young and old in a voice
that includes all ages and ethnicities.

You can see it.

You saw the disbelief on
the faces of the 'other' Republican candidates while they listened to
Ron say the simple truth as Ron has always done.

No one was more
surprised than Ron himself at the reaction.

The Frame imposed by the
'debates' was the corporate – government - media attempt to limit
our choices and so keep us on their grids; that frame is gone now,
replaced by potentials that broaden and deepen every day. Breaking
the framing of the CorporaState was the essential precondition for
real change.

The people are now doing
it themselves, demonstrating how a single, once marginalized,
political campaign can change everything.

Soon they will discover
that the possibilities are limitless even as they exercise their
minds to make sure that they avoid the many attempts to redirect them
and their resources into the pockets of those who scheme to build
their own little empires. That was to be expected. Success attracts
lots of hungry leeches.

Many who formerly
thought of themselves as leftists or progressives are discovering
that in the Ron Paul Revolution there is no left and right.

Ron Paul has committed
himself to rolling back the Federal Government. The rest is up to
the people. A people who govern themselves do it from their own
homes, their own communities, using those too long overlooked tools
of persuasion and consensus building.

All of us were on the
corporate grids. In climbing off we will use the same tools,
cooperation and innovation, sharing knowledge freely, those are the
tools at the foundation of the Ron Paul Revolution.

Individuals are renting
houses in New Hampshire to house volunteers who will work through the
primary. Those volunteers, many of them professionals, will then
move on to South Carolina and Florida. Individuals are putting their
lives on hold; just as if there was a war going on.

That is how the Ron Paul
Revolution happens. Individuals take responsibility. They ask for
help where necessary and the people come, drawn together by that
common vision.

Ron Paul will be
president, if he lives long enough. Killing him would change nothing.
The ideas that Ron speaks have sunk deep. Ron's death would simply
put the Revolution into high gear.

Politics is only one of
the arenas ordinary people will remake using those tools.

Soon we will climb off
all the grids enforced for corporations by government. Energy will
be generated at point of usage. It will be cheap. No more people
will die because they cannot heat their homes in winter or cool them
in summer. Those systems will soon be on the market, despite the
Department of Energy that sucked trillions out of Americans.

As we do in energy, we
will do in all other parts of our lives.

Big Oil, Big Farming,
Big Government all used the same tool, government, to perpetuate
profits.

Production will be much
more local; craftsmanship and pride in work well done will return.
Instead of one global village we will become a globe of villages.

Big Medicine, Big
Pharma, Big Retail, Big Courts; each of these controls us for profit.
Each is a problem the people will solve themselves. Healing can
take unexpected forms; it must to work.

And history will look to
the Ron Paul Campaign as the moment when the people discovered they
did not need government.